to listen deeply whip jesus we must discover silence solitude simplicity we must create space by making some hard choices i hear this complaint so often there's no answer but you must make some hard choices
but the word to find a date place at us and to take root in us we must take time to listen to chew to savour
when we do we will realize that less is more
you know it's a sign of the sickness and the non listening the absurdity of modern western life anyway
in that some part of it seems to know this you know the way we sort of get a little time to listen we get sick
the only time we can slow down
unconsciously our bodies become sick
and so the health industry keeps growing to keep pace with our illnesses
the only time we can slow down and listen seems
a consumer society such as ours reduces everything doesn't it every experience even a religious one into a commodity to be acquired to add to our enormous collection of things and activity and you know consumerism is not just about our pocketbooks it's an
attitude of mind it's a way of being in the world and in the church consuming for the sake of consuming alone with no time to feed on real life and to release it's true meaning because we have no time to chew
and no time to savour
there's simply too much on our plates and we have very little time to eat so we fast food our way life day the eucharist and sunday eucharist
through everything and then run our deathbeds and we say gosh where did it all whoa
you know experts tell us that the attention span of modern western people is decreasing their even telling priests and seminarians now would take courses on breaching homiletics they're telling them now where you can't give a homily beyond so many minutes because the attention pet span of modern
western people is getting less and less than less some say five minutes now what do i mean by that because we can spend three hours at the computer can't wait what i mean is to a ten to one thing we can't give it more than five minutes were being trained by a fast pace culture of illusions
to attend to many things and to be stimulated by many things i can spend hours them at my computer because i will be stimulated by many things but to attend to one thing seems increasingly difficult
to listen with jesus is to make space make time the friends silence and solitude it means to speak slower
simple thing but consciously speak slower
it means to speak less
to listen more to turn off a lot of the background noise that we habitually turn on the tv the radio stereo
it means to listen to god's word hidden in the silence of our hearts
to listen is too deeply as to notice and to notice is to remember
listen to that word and the silence of our hearts which is telling us over and over again you are a river of love pouring itself out
you know i remember when i was in another religious order for twenty one years and then i was exploring may be transferring to a monastic order i had been kind of what flirting with monastic life for many many years but never really could make the jump to leave and
i remember in my own deep listening and i sort of thought i was being called
to move to monastic life and visited the hermitage and big sur and then finally asked to be released from my ministry in my other order and to do a two month observer ship where you know you try it out for two months they look at you you will get them well and i was forty years old at the time
i had had a fair amount of training in psychology so i knew the stupid things men do at forty
and you know i was married to this other order in a lot of men what do they do they have affairs they have divorce at forty i said i don't want to divorce my religious order because i'm going to midlife menopause or something so i was very worried i seem to spiritual directors one of them was had a degree in theology and psychology in the other one was benedictine monks so i was reading about
midlife transition i was doing all the things you're supposed to do
and so a part of me was a felt i should maybe make this move and explore but i was afraid i did not want to leave the familiar even though the familiar was something very good wasn't it i had already committed my life to god i was already a priest i was a religious living in a religious community i was training all the new candidates entering that or
order very responsible job god what more do you want looks pretty good doesn't it
so i was afraid when i want to can i live this contemplative life of prayer in my other order
so i go to big sur for my observe a ship and i basically kind of set up this whole thing i said now god because forty year old men do crazy things you're going to have to hit me over the head
you're gonna have to make it plain and obvious to me that this is what you want that i'm not listening to my own word and doing something foolish so you see i set up a scenario god now has to a dramatic exodus sign well so i'm in there and waiting for something powerful nothing powerful is happening sundays
i'm on a high you know the seesaw goes up and say oh yes i think maybe this is where i'm meant to be and then an hour later it switches and and on on on i know this is too difficult to know when i when i began their i had to begin like every beginner washing pots and pans and then all the voices of what people in my parents said to me when you doing washing pots and pans
are you have all this gift all this pastoral experience and education what do you want to go and become a monk see my family didn't even know what a monk was my dad said well i could understand if you had a handicap
i guess he thought all the monks were kind of walking around and had trouble speaking i said there there's guys with doctoral degrees and authors actually want to not
so anyway i'm kind of angry at god because god is not get the weeks are going by after three weeks before the two months or all i want to leave i'm really an inner agitation i want to leave because god i said this is i'm wasting my time i gave it six weeks thank you very much god now i
can return say i was really afraid that i might be called the monastic life more afraid than i realized and but then i talked myself out of it and then at one point i thought god was saying to me why you're demanding a sign
why can't you just relax be here like some extent to retreat let happened what happened than for home in parliament's you but it just trust me i had the hardest time i wanted to force god's hands finally the end of the two months and there was no sign that i recognize
that i heard no word so i normally you would leave and think about for a while then let them know but even before i left us and well i don't think i'm coming back thank you very much but i'll let you know and i remember driving on that winding road going down the hill saying you know this feeling of shaking the dust from my sandals you have
had your chance you had two months and you didn't speak your word to me so they're leave me alone i'm sick of this monastic bug
the hill and i went and stayed with a family in southern california i was very close to
the second night i broke out in the horrible case of hives i've never had hives in my life
if you know any is bit of psychology hives are classic psychosomatic symptoms classic because they rise from the skin they're literally a message being written on your body and course i knew that i said oh my god
a side is coming
and i got an inkling that god was saying something when i was in the emergency room at a local hospital and they were giving me an injection to make sure my esophagus and swell because they had these huge welts all over this was at eleven o'clock at night
and i said maybe the the word gotta saying is this is an emergency is this fine enough for you john
because i didn't plan on that time so i wanted of sign and a certain way one that i could handle this is a bit embarrassing
five days later the son of that family is driving me up back to big sur and i can't believe it
mrs so why are going back i said damn if i know
i said something's dragging me back but you know my struggle to listen to what i'm saying developing cultivating the steep listening doesn't mean you're just going to suddenly get quick answers to your problems we try to listen to the truth that the that's deep within us we're going to hear a lot of other stuff a
lot of other static and that's sometimes frightened people from cultivating depth in their life from spending creating pockets of quiet and solitude because they're afraid of what other things they're going to so when we have to learn how to deal with these other voices within us and not to sort through them and not to be too frightened by them and to let go and let
godspeed how and when god wants to speak to us
it's interesting the author well the last talk and i'm overtime but i gotta finish this yeah interesting and it's about listening pepper too many words
gotta saying when the nag i'll show you the author to the hebrews tells us something very interesting i always was puzzled by maybe you were it says jesus learned obedience he learned to listen by what and suffered knows that how does that teach you to listen
you will first have to look at what is suffering what does suffering due in a person's life and i think what the author of hebrews is saying is suffering strips as naked doesn't it
it reveals to us that we are indeed frail people frail creatures imperfect dependent on others dependent on god and that our lives are going to end
suffering teaches us that we are not god or at least not the god that we think god is in absolute and control suffering teaches us that like words we come from and are returning to silence
a silence that is always the horizon of our life a silence that few of us know very well
suffering teaches us that we don't create our lives or our own true
or even the meaning of our lives
no suffering teaches us that all we can do is receive
receive our life we save our truth we save our meaning and purpose from another who has gone
our real life we receive as a gift from god moment by moment and you know what deep listening is is receive it
that's what it means to deeply listen is to be a receiver and to have a listening life means you're always listening every moment which means you're always receiving
you always receiving who you are
all that is love all that is not love in us is already passing i think that's one of the things we hear deep within us all that is not love in us is already passing
and you know when we listen deeply enough we find out that even god is not in control of the universe for of our lives
that if god is a river of lava pouring itself out that's god doesn't create your control god creates through what letting go god creates by giving birth
and as we all know the best birth to the bursts that where you learn to let go
to really give birth you have to let go and that's how god create
giving birth pouring out letting go letting be while remaining in communion with that's what a deep listening like teaches us
and too deep to listen deeply with jesus is to awaken to this truth every day and one of the important ways or tools that can help us is scripture the to put things i would suggest scripture in terms of what we method we called lexia davina
one of my tape series is on that which is a quiet prayerful approach to listening through the text
that's the main practice of the order that i belong to the benedictine order is lectio divina and then the second important practice to develop this listening life is to have some form of quiet meditation you know like five minutes we doing the beginning in the end to have some
regular practice that way to teach us to listen
as jesus says the one who listens to my words and my words become a part of them
then the father and i will come to that person and we will make our home within them
hi i'm going to stop here let us have a few moments of silence

huh
huh
huh
he's the son of god
mercy
she saw some ah
mercy
she is no son of god
the my the
geez
the my
geez on son of god
silence me
geez
mississauga no silence
she is a son of god
give me spree
geez
the sun go
the issue
geez on son of god
give me time
jeez no sign up now
give me
geez oh son of god
no
she is no sign up now
no
he in
no
re

how bless you all
the